Playing In Traffic: 2024 Outriders: There's A Lot Going On In There

Outriders! Boston to Provincetown in one day. Officially 125 miles (201 km). Just. For. Fun. A ride that's over a century with no fundraising. Kind of a rarity and real favorite of mine since 1999.

Spoiler Alert: We had a great ride

Due to various conflicts my long ride of the year prior to Outriders topped out around 75 miles (120 km) a month earlier in May. While I had been consistently cycling, I just hadn't had the chance to do a couple more long rides. Since my total mileage for the year to date was just over 2200 miles (3540 km) I had complete confidence in my ability to do the ride and have a good time.

A couple pre ride concerns & hitches occur

I had been training with my friends Richard and Jay for Outriders. We were really excited to do the ride together. Richard in particular hadn't missed a beat in training. Unfortunately, in the week before the event he had a couple injuries flare up and he had to bag out. He was gutted for sure. I said we could go out and do Boston to Ptown unsupported later in the summer.

On top of losing one third of our troika there were some weather concerns. It looked like it might rain for the first few hours of the ride. I really really wanted to ride my Trek Emonda racing bike. If it was going to actively rain, I would have to take my Specialized Diverge since it has fenders and disc brakes. It's far better in rain. The Emonda is a sports car to the Diverge's truck. I love both, but for fun, I really prefer the faster, lighter, better handling Emonda. In the end I prepped both bikes with all my stuff on the Emonda. If it was raining, I'd switch the bags and lights over the morning of the ride.

My wife and daughter left for Provincetown on Friday, driving through the heavy rain that was indeed coming down. Skipping ahead just a bit, when I woke up the forecast had changed and there was no rain, just clouds (and wet roads). I had my customary pre-ride meal of gnocci with marinara sauce and got to bed very early.

A couple years ago I started having a lot of trouble falling asleep before big rides. I made a few changes in my pre ride routine. Nervous? no, those butterflies were excitement. Mentally reframing worked -- I mean, how could I possibly be nervous about riding a route I've done dozens of times? I skipped out on posting funny memes ahead of time (we ride at dawn) and generally tried to ignore the ride except for arranging necessary logistics and tapering for a few days prior to the ride itself.

Too late to be nervous now

Anyway, I got a fairly good night's sleep and was relieved to see the forecast was for mostly cloudy all day. No rain. Just some kind of wet roads from the rain that did fall overnight. I had prepped everything the night before. Coffee in the coffee maker, fried up some eggs, picked out my clothing, etc. Anything to limit the amount of thinking I might have to do at 4 AM. Richard had texted to confirm that he would not be able to ride. Jay texted to confirm that he was up. We agreed to meet at 5:30 AM and ride the four miles to the start.

Despite it being pretty warm I still wore a wind vest and carried my knee warmers in my jersey pockets. You never know if the weather is going to turn. Heck, I also had a space blanket and hand warmers with me. Both are very light and can go a long way to preventing hypothermia if it started raining.

In any case, I was out the door on time and met up with Jay. The roads were wet, but no rain was in the forecast. We chatted as we spun the four miles to the start at the former Cyclorama downtown.

There were quite a few people already there when we arrived. The volunteers got seat up early and were checking people in. We checked in, got our riders numbers written on our legs, deposited Jay's bag for the truck to Ptown & we were off..

I never finished this blog post, so a year later, here is the stub.